Part IVa: Dialogue

How important is dialogue? Very important. Sit down with me and take a look at three simple tips to create strong, believable dialogue.

We’re getting deep into these now, aren’t we? I feel pretty fancy
using Roman numerals beyond a series of “I”s strung beside each other;
now I’m using “V”s! Stupidity aside though, if you haven’t read any of
the first three parts, I’d suggest you start here.
You don’t have to, but since this series is aimed to build your
repertoire of skills to liven up your writing, every little bit helps.
If you’re too lazy and just want to read this one? Well, that’s okay
too. Let’s get started.

Dialogue sounds pretty simple. In a way, it is. Compared to the other points I touched on in this series, dialogue
seems far more basic and structural. That’s true, because without good,
meaningful dialogue you don’t have a story. The thing is, dialogue is
much more than just a boring, structured necessity. Dialogue is
something you can use to help your story soar or plummet to the earth.
Use it correctly, vividly, and it might even carry your writing (which
we don’t want to happen, but still). Use it incorrectly, and no one will keep reading your stuff.

Listen up; dialogue is important.

Not just a little important; dialogue makes your story.
Without dialogue, your story is going to read like an essay, complete
with mind-numbing blocks of exposition that no one wants to read
forever. Without dialogue, you might as well be writing something like
this. An article. People read articles to learn something, or to follow
something someone did (in the case of blogs in general). When people
read to learn, they do want to be entertained, but they’re reading for a
different purpose. When people are reading a blog about someone’s life,
what happened to them that day, etc, the entire piece moves because
it’s a firsthand account of something that really happened. Even though
it’s not dialogue, it comes across more interesting because it’s almost
as if the writer has sat you down and is directly talking to you about
what happened. It comes across stronger than simple exposition.

What about stories though? People read stories for one reason: to be
entertained. That’s why fiction writing is so difficult. If you know a
lot about a certain topic and you know how to write, it’s not that hard
to write something like this; something instructional. When you’re
writing fiction, you have to captivate your reader at every turn. You
have to keep them guessing, but you can’t confuse them too much. You
have to keep the story moving, but not too fast. You have to make the
characters believable, but not too believable and boring. You have to
make the story more realistic than real life, but still include aliens
and vampires.

Fun, right?

It is fun, but it’s a juggling act. Society has a pretty short
attention span, and you have to make a masterfully concerted effort to
keep that focus. It’s not easy. What’s the point behind all this?
Dialogue is likely your number one tool in grabbing people’s attention.
Exciting, believable dialogue that moves your story along will go a long
way towards interesting your readers. How can we create that dialogue
though? How can we do it right?

That’s an extremely complex topic. I could probably write a whole new
series just on dialogue. Instead, I’ll try to be concise here. I’ll try
to highlight a few things that I think are the key elements of
successful dialogue.

Understand your characters.

Consider where your scene is going.

Keep it real.

No kidding, that’s it. If you get those three points down, you’ll be a
dialogue god. Unfortunately, not many have done that. I guarantee that
even the greatest authors of all time still write a scene, read back the
dialogue, and throw it in the trash. It’s a constant struggle. That’s
not too say it’s hopeless; a lot of the time you can sit down and pound
out a scene full of dialogue, read it back, and it’s perfect.

You have conversations yourself, so you know how people talk. When
you try to replicate real speech onto the screen it often comes out
sounding funny. Still, there will be a lot of times where it just flows.
One character says something, and the next replies like anyone would,
just like two people in real life. Hopefully you made sure to make their
conversation mean something to the piece, but I’ll get to that in a
minute. Let’s go over each point in a little more depth.

Understand your characters

The point behind this is that you don’t want dialogue written that
doesn’t match your character. If you’re writing the dialogue of a
six-year-old, which spoken phrase would he use?

The
sound of tiny feet against linoleum made Mrs. Parker turn towards the
noise. The little boy tapped her leg patiently before speaking in an
articulate voice, “Mother, my stomach is having pains.”

The sound of tiny scampering feet
against linoleum made Mrs. Parker turn towards the noise. Her little one
latched onto her leg—almost causing her to fall—and whined, “Mommy my
tummy hurts!”

Obviously the first one doesn’t fit, unless little Timmy was abducted by aliens
where they injected arcane knowledge into his little brain before
laying him back in his bed. That’s the point here, dialogue needs to
mirror your character’s motivations, goals, and personality. If you
understand your character inside and out, you won’t make as many
mistakes when you’re writing their dialogue.

If I could choose any of these three points to pick out as being the most important,
it would be this one. I can get over a line of dialogue in a story that
doesn’t have much purpose being there, or sounds a little contrived
when I read it aloud, but when a character says or does something that
just plain doesn’t fit them? That annoys me, and unless I’m really
absorbed in the writing, I might not keep reading. Still, this is only
one point. They’re all important; especially this next one.

Consider where your scene is going

This point is actually too simplified. Not only do
you want to keep in mind the direction of the scene, you also want to
look at the big picture. I’m talking about the plot, theme, and
direction of the entire piece of writing. Dialogue in the first chapter
might connect to something at the end of a book! Read the example below
and keep in mind that this dialogue is placed a story titled… “A Shadow
In The Deep” (if there is a real book called that, woops).

The smell of booze and saltwater
drifted about the sleepy tavern, old neon lights above the bar humming a
peaceful tune. A ratty old man, weathered and grey by the raging seas
took a swig of his bottle and said to a man across from him, “Went out
yesterday an’ caught me a whole mess of cod. Should have seen the nets
full to bursting, ha ha!”

The smell of booze and saltwater
drifted about the sleepy tavern, old neon lights above the bar humming a
peaceful tune. An old man sat across from another, terror fixed on his
wrinkled face as he whispered to the man across from him, “I think my
days on the sea are over, Ted. Have you seen it? That thing? I swear, I
saw it! Sliding beneath the waves, bigger than a whale! Someone’s going
to get killed by that monster, mark my words…”

This one isn’t as obvious as the first examples with the little boy.
There’s believable dialogue in both of these, and each example stays
pretty true to a discussion between two old seadogs over a pitcher of
ale. The difference here isn’t that one of these examples is wrong, it’s that the second one has a purpose being in the story and the first doesn’t.

There’s nothing wrong with a casual conversation between fishermen
talking about their haul, but what does that tell the reader about the
theme of the story? How does that move the story forward? It doesn’t,
but when we read the second example, we see that one of the men is
haunted by something he saw. He warns his old fishing buddy about what
he thinks is out there, beneath the waves and waiting to strike, as he
believes. When we read that, we’re given a glimpse of what’s to come. It
creates suspense in knowing that as we read through this story, we’re
slowly getting closer to learning the truth and meeting this monster
face to face.

Don’t you agree that the second example accomplishes more,
considering where the scene and story are going? This is a more
difficult point, because we don’t want to load every line of dialogue
too heavily with plot information, but we need for our dialogue to serve
a purpose. Even if two of your characters have a casual conversation,
it should serve a purpose, even if that purpose is just making the
characters more comfortable around each other. Perhaps they shoot the
breeze about sports in chapter three, and end up falling madly in love
in chapter eight? The first small conversation served a purpose, and
that’s the idea here.

Keep it real

The focus behind this point is pretty simple. We just want our dialogue to be believable. We want to be able to see the characters in front of us, and hear what
they’re saying. That’s a difficult task you have as a writer, in that
you’re trying to make words come across as visual. When your reader can
picture what they’re reading clearly in their mind, you’re doing a great
job. How can dialogue lend strongly to this, though? Lets look at
another example.

When something doesn't sound natural, the emotion behind it is lost. You don't want to lose that emotion.

The slam of the door echoed through
the house, shaking the walls as a woman stood facing the blocked doorway
and said, “Abbie, you need to calm down. Open the door.”

Do you see the difference this time? There’s nothing especially wrong
with the first example. The dialogue stays true to the feelings of both
mother and daughter, and it has a purpose. The problem is that it’s
weak, robotic. Phrases like “You don’t understand me. I don’t want to talk to you.”
tell the reader what’s going on and how the character feels, but they
don’t sound natural. When you read that, you feel like you’re reading
dialogue, not hearing it. It doesn’t flow like dialogue should.

In the second example though, it’s different. The dialogue is moving,
active, raw. It fits the characters and progresses the scene, and it
also sounds like a real argument between a teenage girl and her mom. You
can feel the emotion here much more strongly than before, and because
of that it’s much easier to hear it in your head as you read.

That’s the key behind this point: you want the dialogue to sound real.
You don’t want your reader to read it; you want them to hear it. When
your characters speak, it should sound as natural as if they were right
in front of you having a conversation. How can you accomplish this?
Well, it isn’t really that difficult. You’re human, you have family and
friends. You talk. You know how people interact and converse, and when
you create dialogue, you’re trying to mirror that. The subject of the
written words can be anything, but the naturalness you hear in everyday
speech needs to carry those written conversations. Beyond that, just
read your dialogue aloud after you write it. If it sounds funny, you’ll
probably hear it.

I hope all of that wasn’t too much information at once. Dialogue is
an extremely deep and complicated process, but at the same time it’s
very simple. There are a lot of ways to make your dialogue hit harder,
but in the end, the KISS (keep it simple, stupid) policy works just as
well. If you’re doubting some dialogue you’ve written, just ask yourself
three questions mirroring the points above.

Would my character say that?

Does this dialogue serve a purpose?

Does it sound natural?

If you can’t answer yes to all of those questions, odds are you should probably work on the dialogue in question till you can.

Thanks for reading. If you didn’t notice, this is a two part
installment, so keep your eye out for part B of the dialogue discussion.
Also be sure to check out any parts of this series that you missed!

Posted 3 Years Ago

Posted 3 Years Ago

Posted 3 Years Ago

This whole thing has been very helpful, from beginning to end. I have a lot of trouble in dialogue, it always comes off bland and boring. Thank you for having this course up so we can all read it, it has been tremendously helpful.